Going backwards

It used to amaze me, as a young person interested in science, that people would say things like "cigarettes are good for you" just because they were employed by a tobacco firm to do so .. but that was how it was. My dad told me. that when he was young, people were sold cigarettes and told that they were good for your health, and that's why he started smoking

I find it hard to believe that in those days they hadn't noticed what tar did to the lungs and wondered if it was healthy ... or not.

Ofcourse these were just a few maverick scientists.

I do believe that with climate change .. some who tampered with the figures etc will actually have believed that they were doing the right thing .. and making people take note of what they believe is happening. They thought if they upped things a bit that it would make people sit up and do something about it.

I find it hard to understand the guy who contradicted himself with the carbon not causing climate change then going on to say that it's best to keep all the carbon coming cause it would protect the planet against the effects of an ice age!!!! Shudder rather than shiver!!!

Either playing games and forgot himself for a minute or doesn't understand science at all. Well, he had to understand what he was talking about in that respect because he'd just attended a meeting about it all and that is pretty basic.

I was told as a young person that, for some people, all that matters is getting a paper accepted etc .. and, yes, people are occasionally caught changing figures and results.

Same with the "is there life after death or not" bunch. One skeptics organisation had to close down because one prominent member disliked the methods his colleques were using to disprove the possibilty there might be ... because of dirty tactics.

All doing things like that does is stop knowledge growing. But there have always been a few who want to stop that too.